Thanks. It appears all her models have it turned on, and I have never used that feature.

Related to this if you want a non rotated plan view right click on one of your current axes, and choose align view. Then save that view as a scene to easily jump back to it.

That did the trick! Because it was in a foreign language I couldn't tell where to click to change it, your graphic showed me what to do. Thanks so much

Now that's gonna be useful!!! I think I can use that to do what I need to do, has all kinds of options for working with the components and groups. I can't tell you how much I appreciate your help - although I would still like to know why the component browser gives me such weird results. I'm firmly convinced that my basic modeling practices are far from ideal, and I'm paying for it with things like that. While I can do what I set out to do, pretty much, eventually, I think my sloppy techniques are resulting in some unnecessary bumps in the road and larger files and edge counts than need be. If I don't get it right now, it's only gonna get worse as I delve into more complicated models. Anyhow, thanks again.

Hopefully he likes it, too!

Hi Gaieus Thank You for Your reply. @unknownuser said: The real solution would be to delete the big component when you are zoomed in enough and it cannot be seen anyway. Of course, this is only good if you are exporting it as an animation and not presenting it live... Yes, that is exactly the problem. If it was my goal to create a movie, this workaround would be perfect. But I would like to give the possability to hover around and explore it. I will see, if I can let it the way you suggested. Kurt

@unknownuser said: It looks like that plugin works pretty well, albeit with some caveats. As I've said before, converting models from one native 3D model format to another is kind of like performing a machine translation from one language to another. Sometimes it works well (for example, translating from spanish to french). Sometimes it works less well (for example, translating chinese to hungarian) Think of COLLADA as your "esperanto", with all the possibilities and limitations that that implies. john .

Carlsen See this link for concept of what I think you want but need to hear from you http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/details?mid=24a74ef603a753e19f30f02514717f00. The cone is like a stack of pancakes with decreasing dias. It was drawn using a story stick divided using the line tool divide option 1/10 the height for each step . Each face of the stack was created by staring a new face when the staring circle was extruded up to next step( hit ctrl), the edge at each step was scaled based on the radius at that level on the story stick ( used the entity info box for that to make the cone. The surface png in your original OP was the used to create the texture, see this link for that http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVYYdWYRqrg&feature=channel ( watch the video all the way the part you want occurs late). This is just a concept and once you decided on a final geometry then it can be refined Hope this maybe remotely close to what you are looking for

Thanks for the advise. I found what I ws looking for in the new features manual. Gives just enough info to get a handle on the rest of it.

Dear Cosycat, Thank you for the links. The lastwelshmartyr.blog is very intersting. I watched the YouTube clip on Irena Sendler. Very moving. Charly, If you are interested in historic building reconstruction then you and Gaieus must have a lot in common. If you ever holiday in the UK, then be sure to join the National Trust: http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/main/w-chl/w-places_collections/w-architecture_buildings.htm and/or English Heritage: http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/professional/advice/conservation-principles/ The Museum of Welsh Life is also worth a visit: http://www.museumwales.ac.uk/en/stfagans/ Kind regards, Bob

@mitcorb said: For me, reading as much of the forums as possible, whether seeking an answer to a problem or not, challenging myself with non business modeling projects, "going down blind alleys" and discovering the intricate behavior of the program has helped develop my methodology. It really does take some time in the trenches and soon these things will become second nature to you. Sometimes I come over here and just read and find out all kinds of helpful stuff I didn't realize that I didn't know. Does that makes sense?

Let's see if this helps explain it. First, you are absolutely correct that the begining and end segments of the path need to be at 90° to each other for a 1/4 sector and for Follow Me to work correctly. Instead of adding line segments to your 90° arc, though try the following. [image: 5190512797_5e0876427d.jpg] In this image, I've added red lines over the line segments at 90° to each other. Notice these are half the length of the other line segments. Instead of drawing an arc for the Follow Me profile, draw a circle and make sure you drag it out on axis. Then rotate the circle on its center by half the angle between vertices. In the case of a default 24-segment circle, that would be 7.5°. This will set sides parallel to the axis lines. Divide the circle into quarters or as I did eighths and discard all but one of those. Now you have your path for Follow Me set up correctly. The end segments are at 90° to each other and when you put two sectors together, they meet on a line rather than at a point. the other benefit of this is that when you hide seam lines, they are actually hidden. If the seam line occurs on the vertex of the circle, the edges won't hide nicely and softening then will do strange things to the appearance of the faces. It takes longer to read this than do it.

Thank you for the help .

@ely862me said: You are too lazy for this forum ! In the meantime I made my rounding... but when I saw your... I got in love See here my "work"[image: I6pS_My-round-this.png] It's not hard to see that yours looks better

I don't know that I would agree with you. I've been using the program for about 8 years and never had a problem with it. I kind of like the way it works.

@notareal said: And after understanding dpi, you can figure needed image resolution in pixels based on needed quality for different distances: http://www.kerkythea.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=68702#68702 This link was very helpful...thanks, notareal! Rafa's explanation and graphs show the ideal DPI at a viewing distance of 3 meters(which is probably what the average viewing distance will be) to be 50 dpi...this is similar what I have seen now when searching -- billboards can be 36PPI or even 10PPI as Brodie says. Thanks to all who answered, Gaieus' explanation especially made it simple to understand If I find out more relevant info, I will post back here.

@unknownuser said: and I surely forgot about it. Easy to do - SketchUp is complex, regardless of what the marketing team says.

Mass elements are not standard Autocad objects, but special AEC objects created by AutoCad Architecture (formerly Architectural Desktop). These can only be read or manipulated by the originating application, or AutoCad supplied with the appropriate object enabler add-on. To get these into SU in 3D, you will have to use the Export to Autocad function in AutoCad Architecture from a viewport that has a 3D view on. This will convert the Mass elements to standard 3D objects (solids or meshes, I don't know which). The same applies to all Autocad Architecture objects like walls, doors, windows, roofs etc. Anssi

thanks Brodie, taking the location from GEarth and adjusting the North did the trick for now. also i now realize that the same could be achieved if i just rotated the imported google earth terrain snapshot. thomthom: i first had the building done, then i wanted to photomatch it. hence (combined with my rather newbie skills in SU) when i did the photomatching, i moved and rotated my house around (i wanted it to fit in two pictures). thanks for the replies

If you don't have the site contour info: just pull the grade lines on each elevation out a few feet to create contoured planes (use the extrude lines ruby or just add a bottom line to create a vertical plan then push/pull), then fake these ground planes together at the corners...quick and dirty!